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Your quiet disposition, small frame, and hugely curious eyes caught my attention first. You would walk timidly through the door into my corner of a classroom, almost holding your finger to your lips as if whispering sshhhhhh while your brown eyes searched for unspoken permission to enter. You came with the curious masses in the beginning, stepping aside as the bigger, more outgoing students won the prize of participating in Miss Wright's puzzles, books, coloring, or games. When another student came in, you scooted over on your already small chair, making room for another person to sit and participate in whatever was going on at the small table for that moment.

Then my novelty wore off. The masses stopped coming, learning quickly that I am a firm and strict (albeit equally kind and silly) teacher. Some were offended that I would not grant them permission for certain activities on certain days. Others bored easily of the same books over and over or lost int…

My mama. Today is your 55th birthday. And the 28th birthday that I have the privilege of being your daughter.

You may remember the sappy, depressing teenage romance novels I read as a young girl, always centered around a youthful young woman with every promise of life before her, only to die of some rare, degenerative, juvenile disease. Of course she always had a boyfriend and was the star of her high school and oftentimes came from a poor socioeconomic home. There was one such character, Melissa, who was probably dying from leukemia, and her rich best friend (who drove around in a red convertible and laid by the pool all day), Jory, had anger issues with her best friend's disease and death. By the end of the story, Melissa had written Jory a letter. In in she wrote,

"Wrinkled and grey sounds good to me."
Those words have clung to me ever since. (See, life lessons can come from awful books.) Melissa understood the value of grey. She wasn't worried about crow'…